Curriculum & Pedagogy, UBC Faculty of Education

Effective or Wise? Teaching and Assessing Professional Dispositions in Education Under Contract with Peter Lang Publishing. Inc.

Editors:
Dr. Julie A. Gorlewski
State University of New York at New Paltz
Secondary Education
New Paltz, NY
USA
gorlewsj@newpaltz.edu

Dr. Bradley Porfilio
Educational Leadership
School of Education
Lewis University
Chicago, IL
USA
porfilio16@aol.com

Dr. David A. Gorlewski
D’Youville College
School of Education
Buffalo, New York
USA
gorlewsd@dyc.edu

Jed Hopkins
Edgewood College
629 Emerson Street
Madison, WI 53715
USA
jhopkins@edgewood.edu

Julie Gorlewski is Assistant Professor of Secondary Education at the
State University of New York College at New Paltz. Dr. Gorlewski
earned her Ph.D. in the Social Foundations of Education at the
University at Buffalo, The State University of New York in 2008. She
has New York State Certification in Secondary English and Elementary
Education, as well as over 15 years experience teaching English at the
Secondary level. She has published three books and numerous
peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and conference papers on topics
including literacy and identity, neoliberalism and schooling,
multiculturalism, and transformative education.

Brad J. Porfilio is Assistant Professor of Education at Lewis
University in Romeoville, IL. Dr. Porfilio received his Ph.D. in
Sociology of Education in 2005 at the University at Buffalo. During
his doctoral studies, he served as an Assistant Professor of Education
at Medaille College and D’Youville College, where he taught courses
across the teacher education spectrum and supervised pre-service and
in-service teachers from Canada and the US. He has published numerous
books, peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, edited volumes, and
conference papers on the topics of urban education, youth culture,
neoliberalism and schooling, transformative education, teacher
education, gender and technology, and cultural studies

David A. Gorlewski is Assistant Professor of Education at D’Youville
College in Buffalo, NY, where he teaches courses in curriculum
planning and English methods. Dr. Gorlewski earned his EdD in
Educational Administration at the University at Buffalo, The State
University of New York in 2000. He is a former high school English
teacher and assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction
with extensive experience in mentoring preservice and practicing
teachers.  He has published two books and several articles involving
educational reform (specifically, how reforms change schools and how
schools change reforms), and the interrelations between and among
classroom and program assessment.

Jed Hopkins is Associate Professor of Education at Edgewood College,
Madison, WI.  Dr. Hopkins received his Ph.D in the Department of
Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota in 2009. Dr.
Hopkins began his teaching career in London as an Elementary teacher
almost thirty years ago. Since then he has taught at numerous levels
from elementary through middle as well as college pre-service and
in-service teachers at the undergraduate and graduate levels.  His
teaching and research interests straddle literacy, teacher education,
and philosophy of Education.  In particular, Hopkins is interested in
appropriating neo-Heideggerian phenomenology for his work developing
new approaches to teacher education.  Currently he is working on
phenomenological approaches to drama-in-education and investigating
ways of using video to create more authentic collegial communities.

Premise for the book
Teaching, rightfully, carries the title professional; and although
this sentiment may resonate well with those of us in the field, its
foundational core has been rendered problematic by federal and state
policies and practices that frame teaching as “less than” a profession
– and teachers as “less than” professional.

A key set of these policies and practices are marked by
standardization – of testing, curriculum, and instruction. In
addition, Federal Race to the Top legislation measures the level of
teacher competence based on student performance on standardized tests.
Programmed instruction and a focus on “strategies,” as exemplified by
short-term programs like Teach for America, increasingly view teachers
as trainers rather than educators.

To counter this, we suggest that teacher educators, working in
collaboration with their partners in Pre K-12 schools, ought to focus
on professionalism and how professional dispositions matter as a means
to position teachers to produce what we call wisely effective learning
environments for their students.

There are two broad contexts in which Schools of Education operate:
the first deals with the entire certification and licensure process.
But the second is related to the liberal arts tradition. This means
that Schools of Education are involved, albeit in different ways and
to different degrees, with the work of the humanities, the social
sciences, and the hard sciences. These two contexts are in tension –
perhaps never more in tension than they are now. How and to what
extent can we balance the pragmatic and civic responsibility of the
first context with the critical, pluralistically intellectual, and
creative commitments that are inherent in the second? The resolution
is difficult because both contexts operate with different assumptions,
different discourses, and different stances toward the phenomenon of
education.

How can teacher education programs instill professional dispositions
in their candidates? How can we measure or assess those dispositions?
How can we balance the obsession with the mechanisms of accountability
with the need for authentic education? How can we position the liberal
arts and the humanities more centrally in teacher education programs?
What might be the parallel issues in education today that work against
the professionalism of teachers?

Audience

This volume will be a valuable resource for instructors who teach in
the fields of teacher education; assessment; educational leadership;
social, and cultural and philosophical foundations of education; and
sociology – as well as for their students. It may also be of interest
to researchers, scholars, and the broader education public as well as
mainstream and media sources. In addition, this text would be useful
for school district administrators and teacher mentors to use with
early career and practicing teachers. The text will offer an excellent
vantage point for initiating professional discussion around complex,
challenging issues regarding accountability that face educators today.

Time-frame
1) Proposals due by October 15, 2012;
2) Confirmation of selected chapters by December 15, 2012;
3) Contributors will have their first drafts completed by February 15, 2013.
4) The editors will review these first drafts, and provide detailed
comments and suggestions by April 15, 2013.
5) The contributors will make all of the necessary edits, and send the
final chapters to the editors by June 1, 2013.
6) The editors will draft a comprehensive introductory chapter and
have the foreword written by a well-known scholar in the field, which
will be ready along with the index and other editorial issues by July
1, 2013.
7) Once the publisher’s Editor has approved the text, the finalized,
formatted volume will be submitted to the publisher by August 1, 2013
which should allow for copy-editing and other related matters to be
completed for a publishing date sometime late in 2013.

Process for Chapter proposals
Submit the following:
**Proposed title of chapter
**Authors, with complete addresses and 150-word biography for each author
**300-word outline of proposed chapter, including, where applicable,
theoretical, methodological and conceptual considerations.
To Julie Gorlewski at gorlewsj@newpaltz.edu by October 15, 2012.
For questions or queries, contact  Julie Gorlewski at
gorlewsj@newpaltz.edu, Brad Porfilio at porfilio16@aol.com, David
Gorlewski at gorlewsd@dyc.edu, or Jed Hopkins at
jhopkins@edgewood.edu.